First Semester Reflection

Coming into my senior year of e-Comm, I was ready to make the best work of my high school career. We dove head first into a refresher assignment over the 6 shot system, my group making a five minute short film about a young boy’s crush, called Dearly Departed.

Dearly Departed

My group and I came up with the short film after joining our two different ideas of a break up story and a little boy going to a park. After deciding on that, we got our storyboards and script written up and agreed on a filming day.

We got everything shot and filmed in about 3 hours, thanks to our stellar actor, Andy. Shout out Andy. Editing was a piece of cake, the only real issue being the audio we recorded sounded pretty muffled, but I did the best I could to correct it in post. Overall, I’m pretty happy with what we came up with in the end.

Tech Deck - “THE MEGA RAMP”

Our next assignment was to make a commercial. Right off the bat, we all knew we wanted to make it about Tech Decks, the finger skateboards. We originally wanted to just make a 15 second ad you’d normally see before a YouTube video, but with the ideas we had written down and drawn out we realized the commercial was gonna have to be at least 30 seconds.

Wanting to make something as close to a real commercial a kid would see on Nickelodeon, we knew all we needed were shots of flip tricks and shots of a cool looking skater dude. That decided, we went out to target, bought a Tech Deck skateboard and set up our ramps in the parking lot of the store. We filmed all my tricks in about an hour, and called it a day. Then for the second film day my group went to the skate park (I couldn’t go, I had work) and filmed Dom dressed up in early 2000s skater threads doing tricks with the Tech Deck. I looked over the footage and instantly knew we did it.

Editing this video was very fun. I got the best tricks and slowed them down, lined them up, sped them up, mixed and matched, and hashed and sashed. With clips of Dom sprinkled in, and the graphic Jack made for the end, the commercial was close to perfect. It was missing something, though. I watched a couple real Tech Deck ads and spotted the final piece: light leaks. I downloaded green screen light leak effects and wove them into our video as best I could. The finished product is what I’m most proud of so far this year, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Film Reel

With every film reel I make, I try to do something different. This would be the first time I’d try to stick with a theme. I decided on Loneliness and Anger. Theme chosen, I also resolved to make the focus of this film reel be my editing skills. I wanted as many cool stuff I could fit without it being too much.

The song I picked was very intentional. Never Enough, by Rex Orange County. It’s about feeling like you’re not good enough, with an end resolution to improve yourself without the help or pity of anyone else. It’s fake deep, but I really wanted to see if I could stick with an overarching theme. In the end, I think I was successful in at least achieving a consistent mood.

Short Film

We have not been focusing on our short film much at all this past month, mostly because almost our entire group has been writing the feature film script. We have finalized our script, actors, costumes, locations and storyboards, though, so we’re ready. Our plan is to film our movie the first week of winter break, and finish editing it the second week. It’s gonna be my first time making a short film longer than 5 minutes, so I’m excited. We have a good solid story.

Skill Tree

My greatest strength is definitely in editing, both video and audio. It’s hard work - exhausting work - but the payoff is so worth it. I love putting all the pieces together and seeing a final product I’m proud of. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I would say, though, that my greatest weakness is camera work. I don’t really know my way around a DSLR as much as I should as a senior in e-Comm, so I plan to at least familiarize myself with them this year. Here’s hoping.

Feature Film

Since the start of the semester I have been looking forward to the feature film. Last year I wasn’t really involved with the actual production of The Ebony Codex much, so this year I intend to change that. I have been heavily involved in the script writing process of this movie, actually typing out about a third of the movie itself. It’s tricky work, but I think by the end of winter break we’ll have a clean final script.

I’m also in charge of the music for the feature, as well as all of the post production crew. It’s a big responsibility, but I’m sure I’ll be able to manage. I work well with others, and I know how to make people get things done.

Overall, this senior year is shaping up to be my biggest e-Comm year yet, so I am very excited. I get to do all the things I love: music, editing, and writing. I will not mess this up. I promise.

Here’s to senior year.

End of Year Reflection

Mario Bustos



Commercial

At the beginning of the year my group and I made a Reese's Puffs commercial set in the Civil War. This is one of my favorites because its still very professional, has great acting, a good location and perfect music. It took us around three days to prepare everything beforehand, and just 3 hours to shoot it all on the fourth day. A challenge we did face however was the dimming light go the evening, but I think we still managed pretty well.

As my first video project of junior year, I was very pleased with the result we achieved. It helped me learn how to edit between conversation naturally and seamlessly, and I also got a quick intro into color grading in Premiere Pro. We won first place for best commercial in my class, which was really cool, and it only made me more motivated to keep making videos.

I love this video. It's fun concept, easy enough to shoot, and it turned out pretty good. It's aged well these past couple of months.

Short Film

Toward the end of the first semester, Jack, Dom and I made Roughhouse Rock. This is also one of my favorites because its the first short film I've made that I actually like watching, and because I got to make it with my best friends.

At first, we were unsure about the script, but after making significant edits to it I was ready to dive in. Preproduction took around a week this time around, as we had to make sure we had costumes, locations and actors down. Once we had those on lock it was time to film.

Except, our three film days we had planned were cut to just one. One film day for four different locations. And I had work for the first 3 hours of it. We decided to go ahead regardless and try to get as much done as possible. After a nine hour shoot with no breaks, we somehow managed film everything. We were ecstatic.

Although it turned out alright in the end, this project made me realize that you need some good plan B's for videos at all times. It also taught all of us how to work under pressure.

Our short film received generally positive feedback with the exception of one particularly harsh review. When we entered it in a school film competition, however, we heard "Roughhouse Rock" called for first place. I couldn't believe it. Looking back at it, I'd change quite a few things with our script and shots, but overall I am happy with the film.

General Thoughts

This year, I do think I used my time wisely in classy as well as outside it. I put e-Comm first in my priorities a lot - sometimes to the chagrin of my mother - spending many hours editing clips and making films.

My strengths would definitely have to be in post production, specifically editing. I take the raw footage and clips and put together a cohesive story and enjoyable video. I am well versed in audio recording and editing as well, being as that was my production role for my class feature film. I would also say that I am a good leader. When Jack or Dom start to get distracted or off topic, I bring them back in focus to the project at hand.

I would like to work on my camera skills, though. Being a competent cinematographer would be very useful.

Feature Film

As I said, my production role for this year's feature film was Audio Editor. My job was to take the footage and put in dialogue recorded from the zoom, as well as any special effects we needed. 

I think I really contributed to the movie's success, since I'd take scenes that had our directors cringing in embarrassment and make them look and sound more professional, more to the vision they had in mind. Sound is very important to a film, after all. I spent many hours in and out of class working on the feature film, and I think it all paid off pretty well.

Final Thoughts

This year, what I loved doing the most was making videos with my best friends. It almost never felt like homework, or an assignment we HAD to do - it was fun. We had a great time doing what we love.

I do have to say I look forward to what next year will bring, as I will be more focused than ever at making good engaging content. With my friends, I feel like we can make anything we want. Within reason, of course.

That's why next year I'd really like to be in 3rd and 4th hour Entertainment once again. I'd be able to make great projects with familiar faces, and teach the juniors important skills and advice I wish we were given.

In addition, for the feature film next year, I would absolutely LOVE to be the composer. Being in a band and the keyboardist and chief producer, I would put my all into making a great soundtrack for an awesome movie.

Here's to next year.

Public Service Announcement

My group of three decided tone again come together and make a video. At first we thought to do a PSA warning against Juuling, but ended up going with a video promoting stretching instead! I think it was the right choice for us.

Jack drew up a story board for the idea while Dom and I wrote the script. We finalized our vision for our PSA, and we were ready to film in a couple days. Come our first film day, though, and one of our actors aren't able to film. This was a setback, but we still had our violin player available. Filming the violin playing scene in twenty minutes, we were done for the day.

Our next filming day was much more successful. We knocked out the two remaining scenes in under two hours and called it a wrap. While we were shooting, we came up with the idea of making the whole PSA look like a VHS, to give a kind of PE Health class video vibe.

The next day, it was all up to me as the editor. I had a day to edit it all, so I had to stay after class all through lunch and history. I managed to crank out a decent looking video though, even with a difficulty in creating the stereoscopic anaglyph.

I'm happy with the final product, but one thing I would do different is make the pink slides in between a lot cooler with pictures.